We welcome back Thor Mitchell, who shares his journey from being a CPO at CrowdCube to becoming a VP of Product at Miro, where he established an Associate Product Manager (APM) program. Thor discusses the importance of structured APM programs, the qualities to look for in candidates, and the benefits of bringing fresh talent into companies.
Featured Links: Follow Thor on LinkedIn | Miro | Apply for one of Miro's graduate programs
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Episode transcript
Randy Silver: 0:00
Hey, it's the product experience. And I'm Randy Silver. And did you know? We've been doing this podcast weekly for nearly 300 episodes. We're actually going to celebrate our sixth anniversary in January. Yikes, one of the best things about being around that long is that some of our original guests have gone off and done some really cool things, and then we get to invite them to come back in and talk to us again. That's what happened with Thor Mitchell, who, since we last had him on, went off to become a VP of product at Miro and start an associate product manager program there. If there's any other guests you want us to bring back on, just hit me up on Blue Sky or LinkedIn, but in the meantime, let's bring on THor.
Lily Smith: 0:44
The Product Experience Podcast is brought to you by mind, the product part of the pendo family.
Randy Silver: 0:49
Every week we talk to inspiring product people from around the globe visit mindtheproductcom to catch up on past episodes and discover free resources to help you with your product practice. Learn about mind, the products conferences and their great training opportunities.
Lily Smith: 1:05
Create a free account to get product inspiration delivered weekly to your inbox. Mind, the Product supports over 200 product tank meetups from New York to Barcelona. There's probably one near you, THor.
Randy Silver: 1:24
welcome back to the podcast. It's been an ages. How are you doing?
Thor Mitchell: 1:28
I'm very well. How are you?
Randy Silver: 1:38
I'm doing good. So you were, I believe, the guest on the very first episode we released, which was more than a few weeks ago.
Thor Mitchell: 1:51
So, for anyone who's not kept up with you since those days, what have you been up to for the past five years and change? Yeah, I think at that point I just come off the back of three and a half years as CPO at a UK fintech startup called Crowdcube. In the equity crowdfunding space, I spent a couple of years doing sort of coaching and consulting for people in similar positions so sort of CPOs and heads of product at early stage companies in the UK, europe and the US and then in early 2020, I was introduced to Miro and after a few months working with them as a consultant, I joined them full time later that year, in the thick of the pandemic, and of course, that was quite a journey, as you can imagine. They went through a dramatic period of hyper growth, grew. Both the team and the business substantially really shifted from being a product-led growth business into like a worldwide SaaS enterprise vendor and I was a VP of product there. I had a team of people. We were working on the broader sort of ecosystem around Miro, so the developer platform, partnerships, integrations and so on and so forth.
Thor Mitchell: 2:44
So that was an amazing experience. I really learned a lot and also great to experience that growth journey and then I moved on earlier this year, decided it was time to move back to the UK. We've been living in Amsterdam for a couple of years. That's where they're based, and I recently joined a VC firm in London called Balderton Capital, who have invested in lots of companies you may have heard of, like Revolut and Depop and so forth, and they have an exec in residence program where they have sort of experienced operators in each of the major disciplines there to support the portfolio, so working with a lot of interesting startups providing coaching, mentoring and community building support.
Randy Silver: 3:19
Fantastic, but the thing that we're going to talk about today is something you did do at Miro that you didn't touch on. Just there, you set up a program for associate product managers, an APM program, and I think this is something you originally had experience of when you were at Google, correct?
Thor Mitchell: 3:36
Yeah, so I was at Google for nine years, back from 2006 to 2015. And for the last five years of that I was in the product org and worked very closely with people who were participating in Google's APM program, which was well established at that point, and just had exceptionally good experiences working with these young people. And then, when I returned to the UK and joined Crowdcube in 2015, I thought you know what I'd like someone like that in my team and I went out to hire someone out of university to coach them into product management and really, really struggled, because there was just a real lack of awareness of product management as a career opportunity and as a career path in the UK at that time amongst undergraduates. So I spent a significant amount of my time outside of work trying to raise awareness of product management amongst undergraduates in the UK, working with universities and business schools, doing talks, doing interviews, online, things like that.
Thor Mitchell: 4:31
I wrote some articles, including one for my product, and then, when I arrived at Miro, I discovered that they did not have any form of graduate recruitment in place and it only seemed right that I would try and correct that, otherwise I would have been a hypocrite. So not long after I joined in early 2021, I started those conversations about might we put together a program to hire graduates into product management. It took about two years all in to get the program off the ground and get the first APMs in. They joined the summer of 2023 and the program has gone from strength to strength since, so it's something I'm particularly proud of from my time there.
Randy Silver: 5:11
Well, let's clear things up. Let's go back to the beginning. What exactly is an associate product manager? How does it differ from being just a junior product manager or a product owner? I think different organizations use different terminology in different ways.
Thor Mitchell: 5:26
Yeah, it's a great question and it isn't super well defined, but in most cases, when you hear people talk about APMs, they are referring to structured programs to coach people into product management for the first time often, but not exclusively people who have recently graduated from university or college, so they tend to target a younger audience. I have seen some companies who offer APM programs for people who are doing mid-career transitions. That's not what we did at Miro, it's not what they do at Google and obviously, based on my experiences, the Miro program was modeled somewhat on the way they did things at Google. So, yeah, but one of the things that really differentiates these APM programs from just regular entry level recruiting is they tend to be structured and often 18 month or two year rotational programs, so you don't spend the entire time as an APM in a single team. You will move between teams to experience different parts of the business and there will be a structure of support around you in terms of coaching, training and other opportunities to learn.
Randy Silver: 6:31
Okay, I want to jump straight to something that I've always been confused by and this may just be my bias in hiring and my approach to things but can you really become a good product manager going through an APA, just coming out of university, going straight into an APM program? Do you not need experience in other parts of an organization first, whether it's dev, design or BA, or even a role outside of product development or out of software development?
Thor Mitchell: 6:52
Yeah, it's a great question and it does come up quite often.
Thor Mitchell: 6:55
I think people who haven't worked with APMs tend to have very reasonable concerns as to whether it's realistic.
Thor Mitchell: 7:01
That was never an issue for me, because I'd seen firsthand how well this could work, right Like I had multiple data points that showed this was a very, very valuable thing to do.
Thor Mitchell: 7:10
But it doesn't just happen by chance right. It's something that companies have to be very deliberate about. They have to make a commitment to doing this, they have to put in place a very strong recruitment process that is highly selective, and then they have to put in place the support that these people need to develop into world-class APMs. And there are a lot of benefits that come with implementing these programs. But you have to kind of believe in it from the start, and I've seen just if you get sort of passionate, high-energy young people who really are excited about careers in technology, they can bring a very fresh perspective into the organization and they can absolutely be developed into successful APMs. And in fact, many of the most successful CEOs that are in the technology sector today started out as APMs, including people like Brett Taylor, who was the co-CEO of Salesforce for a while. I think he's now the chairman of OpenAI. I think maybe Brian Chesky had appeared as an APM, so there's certainly a strong track record of people forging successful careers in technology that start as.
Randy Silver: 8:14
APMs Thor. What do you look for in someone that's entering an APM program? How do you interview and decide who's a good candidate?
Thor Mitchell: 8:22
So we had a pretty structured process for this. Really, you're looking for people who have the sort of the core soft skills of an APM. You know, something I used to say to people often when we talk about interviewing more generally is like focus on the things you cannot teach. And that's even more true with APMs, because you're not talking about people who have a strong track record of work in the technology sector. So you really have to go back to the fundamentals. Do they have a passion for technology? Are they able to engage in good discussions on technical topics? Do they have a strong empathy? Do they have humility? Are they high energy? Are they generally optimistic? Are they quite entrepreneurial? Do they get stuff done?
Thor Mitchell: 9:05
So often you look at their kind of journey, their academic journey, and you look at extracurricular activities, things that they've done. That kind of stand them out from the crowd. Maybe they led a society or maybe they started a business on the side, and we look for things that anything that shows some degree of kind of self-motivation. So maybe they were in drama or maybe they were doing know, in drama, you know, maybe they were doing, uh, lighting for theater productions or or just played on a sports team, something like that that just shows they've got that, that energy.
Thor Mitchell: 9:33
And then, obviously, we had a structured interview process.
Thor Mitchell: 9:36
We would start with one thing we did do, actually, which worked extremely well and so well that I will probably use it again in future is that rather than ask for a cover letter, we would ask for a cv. But we would also for a CV. But we would also ask them to put together a mirror board about themselves, and that would both introduce them to the product if they hadn't seen it before, but also, because it's such an unstructured format, it would give them a chance to really show creatively what they could do and how they think about and how they position and present themselves. And we got some amazing mirror boards that showed all these vibrant things people were doing, photos and videos and their personal stories and really helped us get an insight into them, and that helped us sort of whittle the numbers down significantly. And then we would go for an interview process where there would be a phone screen and then there would be three sort of standard format interviews One focused on individual skills as a PM, one focused on collaborative skills and then a technical interview.
Randy Silver: 10:27
So you think focusing on individual skills there, but these are people who haven't, in many cases have not entered the workforce yet. So what kind of individual skills are you looking for?
Thor Mitchell: 10:39
So we're looking for, essentially, an ability to communicate well, so present themselves well, talk well about topics.
Thor Mitchell: 10:49
We're looking for an insight into technology and products. I guess a sense that they have a passion for the space, essentially, and that they have an eye for quality. And then, as I say in the second interview, we're looking at how well will they work with other people. So we're looking at examples where they've collaborated, where they've dealt with challenging interpersonal situations, how they have worked in teams, both in cases where they've led but also in cases where they've been part of a team that someone else has led. So we're looking for people who aren't just all like super type A, expect to be in charge all the time. That will only cause conflict. We need people who can integrate well into the team but also take the lead when needed. And then for the technical interview we are looking not necessarily for we're not doing coding interviews we're looking for people who enjoy discussing technical topics in detail and can maintain high bandwidth conversations with engineers on the details so that they can build a good relationship with those engineering teams.
Randy Silver: 11:46
It's funny listening to you say that I'm going to ask you a bit of a more critical or tough question, and I'm genuinely curious where we're going to go with this one. Some of the people I respect the most, some of the people I know really well who are great in this field, are people who are, at heart, introverts and I wonder if, at that stage in their life, they would have been able to handle some of the things you're talking about there the clear communication, it sounds.
Randy Silver: 12:11
The extracurriculars, the communicating, the way that they work in teams and taking leadership roles. This is very often stuff that people had to develop into. Is there a bias against that personality type in this program, or is that just the way it is?
Thor Mitchell: 12:31
I wouldn't say there is, and the reason for that is because one thing we didn't talk about is that one thing that's really important is building and this was again advice we received before we put the program together is building a strong cohort. So a lot of the value of these APM programs comes not just from the active coaching but also from the relationships that the APM has built amongst themselves. We want to create a cohort that are friends for life and that, even as they disperse out into the technology world over time, they stay in touch, and they stay in touch with the company as well, and so we did put a lot of emphasis on building a cohort that was diverse across itself and that would have a good mixture of perspectives and a good mixture of character types.
Randy Silver: 13:10
So it's not only the future CEOs that you're selecting for. You're looking for a well-rounded group.
Thor Mitchell: 13:15
We're looking for a well-grounded group, but I think we are looking for future CEOs and I would challenge the suggestion that you cannot be a future CEO as an introvert. In fact, I would argue that many of the CEOs I've worked with Larry Page and others are absolutely introverts. So I think we are looking for people who have that ambition in the long term that could one day be a director in the company, if you like, if they stayed with us. But we hope we'll one day become a CEO or something along those lines. But we have a very open mind as to what types of candidate would fit that long-term mold.
Randy Silver: 13:50
Okay, and yeah, I didn't mean to imply that introverts can't go into very successful things. I think it was more of at that stage of their life they're less likely to demonstrate some of the things that would mark them out as those candidates.
Thor Mitchell: 14:04
Yeah, Well, I think, just on that point as well, there's a great book, book Quiet, by Susan Cain, which is very much about the power of introverts, and it's been a while since I read it, but if I recall correctly, it says that studies have shown that teams that are predominantly made up of extroverted people often perform well if they're led by an introvert, and vice versa. And so if you actually want to make because again there's a distribution of sort of character types across engineering and these other teams as well you need kind of that mix. You don't want to pair introverts up with introverts or an extroverts up with extroverts, you will end up with teams that don't necessarily function as well as they could.
Randy Silver: 14:42
Okay, so you talked a little bit earlier about how the program was designed to have rotations. You talked about how it was designed to build skills, but also build relationships. What else is the program designed to do? What makes a good program for APMs?
Thor Mitchell: 14:55
Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth starting with, like why, as a company, would you consider doing this right? As we'll discuss in a moment, this is not an easy or low effort thing to do. It requires real commitment, and so there has to be good reasons to do it. And so the reasons that we were doing it were firstly, it creates this great annual influx of fresh talent into the organization, and talent at a different stage in their career, with a different potentially like a different generation, so they have a different perspective. It also helps rebalance the seniority within the organization.
Thor Mitchell: 15:28
One of the challenges we had at Miro was that over the course of the pandemic, when things were just very high intensity and we needed to grow quickly and move quickly, we hired a lot of quite senior people, and as we came out of the pandemic, we ended up with quite a top heavy organization, which caused real challenges when it came to personal development, because there were not the opportunities to move upwards that people were looking for, and also people were being expected to do work that they felt was more junior level work and wasn't really helping them develop, because someone has to do it, and so when we brought APMs into the organization. It also acted as sort of a pressure release valve on the organization and provided a better distribution of skills and experience. Also, another challenge we had is that we because, again, because we had a more senior organization we didn't have opportunities to help people who are in sort of senior PM and above develop into people leaders, and so it provided opportunities for them to do that. And then, as I said, there's sort of a long-term benefits, which are you create this alumni network of APMs who become advocates and ambassadors for the business as they go out into the technology sector in the long term and maybe they'll start a business and maybe you'll acquire that business at some point. Right, like it's good for your network and it also for us. It was a way of also investing in our brand as a technology company and as a recruiter and sort of demonstrate that we were a forward think, one of the sort of forward thinking-led businesses in Europe. So that was sort of our motivation.
Thor Mitchell: 16:49
And then, in terms of what makes a good program, I think I talked earlier about the need for structure. There has to be more to it than just a job. So we thought a lot about how do we create value for the APMs and for the rest of the business from this program. And so we put in place a structured program of training over the year, often delivered by domain experts from within the business, but occasionally we would bring in outside experts as well. We also set up a book club for the APMs, which then became popular with non-APMs and grew into a larger book club. But we kept reminding ourselves it was always primarily to support the APMs and work through some of the classic texts of product management. If you like. And also you know, we worked hard to integrate the APMs into the larger product management community. So we would take them to events, we would take them to meetups, we would encourage them to speak at meetups, things like this that really helped them build that network from scratch.
Randy Silver: 17:43
What level of responsibility would they take on? I mean, you bring somebody in who's very junior in their career and product. You're making very critical decisions around prioritization, you're getting deep into things around discovery and interviewing all that kind of stuff. What kind of level of responsibility would they be ready to take on?
Thor Mitchell: 18:03
Yeah, that's a great question, and it's actually a slightly different question for the first rotation versus the second rotation. In fact, one of the things I did before we kicked the program off is I went and interviewed people who are running APM programs at a number of large, successful companies, including Google, dropbox, lyft and Uber and a number of others, and got a lot of good advice, and one of the pieces of advice I got was the selection of projects is critical to the success of the program. You can't just put APMs on anything. You have to matchmake them with projects that are a good fit for an APM program, and so we had a process once we completed the interview process and we had made offers and those offers have been selected, we had a process for matchmaking those APMs against projects in advance of their starting, and what we did was we actually sort of put out a call for proposals within the organization Teams could submit using a template.
Thor Mitchell: 18:55
We provided a proposal for an APM rotation project and then we would evaluate it against a number of criteria, and those criteria broadly fell into two buckets. The first was how suitable is this as a project for the APM themselves? In other words, is it well defined. It needs to be very clear what's expected of them. Does it have strategic value? We don't want them just doing vanity projects or projects that won't get any executive attention or support. Does it have clear customer and business value? Will it offer them the learning opportunities that they're looking for? So does it have reasonable diversity? Does it cover a decent percentage of the lifecycle of a product, so they get to see a lot of the journey of product development in that time.
Thor Mitchell: 19:33
And then the second category was how ready of the team to take on an APM so sort of operational readiness. Are they well staffed? Are they reasonably autonomous? Do they have a potential line manager who we believe is well equipped to actively coach this APM? So we looked at this quite carefully and then selected projects accordingly. And then, lastly, we would also pair APMs up with a mentor, so that was another senior PM or above in the organization who was not their line manager, often in a different stream, so that they were completely objective, and sometimes we would take those from teams that had applied but been unsuccessful in getting an APM.
Randy Silver: 20:16
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Lily Smith: 21:08
Whether you're coming to the Barbican in person on March 10th and 11th or tuning in digitally, join us and get inspired at MTP Con. London Tickets are on sale now. Check out mindtheproductcom forward slash MTP Con to find out more, or just click on events at the top of the page so this would be, uh, as you said, about two rotations of about a year each.
Randy Silver: 21:40
Yeah, when they completed it, what kind of thing were they ready for? Are they ready to be a product manager in an organization? Do you think so?
Thor Mitchell: 21:48
yeah, so it's a. It's an interesting question. The first thing I say, just because you've reminded me, is that we debated at length how long the rotation should be. At Google, they do two by 12. At Facebook, I believe, they do two by nine, and there was certainly an appetite in the leadership initially to have shorter rotations and get them through quicker, but we learned in the first year that that didn't really work. We were going to do nine and nine or something, or nine and six and nine. We had this idea to maybe put a cross-functional rotation in between the two nine-month rotations. But when we got to six months into the first rotation, we realized that they were really only just up to speed with the fundamentals of the role and they were doing exceptionally well. But that first six months was super intense, just like a crash course in the fundamentals of product management, and to really then be able to take those learnings and apply them and generate value, they needed a bit more time. So we actually reverted to 12 months, two by 12 rotations, and I think that was the right thing to do.
Thor Mitchell: 22:45
Now, as I say, the first APMs joined Miro in the summer of 2023, which means they will graduate from the program in the summer of next year and so we haven't actually gotten to the point where we've gone all the way through the cycle. But by the time I left but obviously I've seen that at Google and to be honest, by the time they got to their second rotations they were extremely capable PMs already. And you know we had situations where we had difficult conversations during the performance management process because we had APMs who were outperforming PMs that were several levels above. So really the question really at the end of the two years is do they stay in the same team, do they move on to a different team or potentially, do they move on somewhere else if they wanted to. They weren't obliged to stay.
Randy Silver: 23:31
And what was your expectation? Obviously, companies set things up like this because they want to recruit talent early. They want to get them at a cheap rate, or comparatively cheap rate. So what was the expectation for Miro that? How many would you be retaining? What kind of roles would they be going into? Or is this just an experiment at that stage?
Thor Mitchell: 23:52
I think we started with just two people in the first year and then we grew to four Actually, we offered four, we had four slots available for the second year although one person had to drop out the last minute, unfortunately and then we already had headcount approved for next year another four people and I think our expectation is that they would thrive and then they would stay right. Well, we hope we build an environment that they enjoy being in and that offers them opportunities for continual growth. Having spoken, as I say, to people who run APM programs at other organizations, especially a company like Google that takes on something like 45 APMs a year, there's obviously some people who don't make it through the program or who either choose to drop out or who don't perform at the level that was hoped and maybe move into a different role or to a different firm, but we weren't at that stage, fortunately.
Randy Silver: 24:41
And I think you've touched on this already, but you said at Crowdcube you were looking to take on one person and Miro you started with two. How big do you need to be to make something like this work? Because it sounds like the infrastructure around this, the management, time and care and attention that needs to go into this is considerable. So in the startup phase, can you do it with just a couple of product teams or do you really need scale to be able to find the right initiatives, the right matches and have a number of people to contribute and help run a program like this?
Thor Mitchell: 25:12
Yeah, to do a structured program, I think you need a certain amount of scale. I think you need an experienced product leader in place who can act as the executive sponsor of the program, and then you need enough product teams that you have some strong up and coming PMs who can act as line managers, coaches and mentors, and then you have enough engineers to actually accommodate an influx of additional people. So to my mind, this is a growth stage opportunity. That's not to say that at early stage you cannot hire entry level PMs. You absolutely can, and that's what I did at CrowdCube but it would not be a two year structured rotational program. It would just be a conventional recruiting exercise and then, as the head of product or the CPO, you would commit to managing and coaching that person yourself. I still think that's a highly valuable thing to do, but again, it is not what we think of as an APM program.
Randy Silver: 26:00
Right, it's not a formal one anyway. It's just a similar approach and done with one person intensely involved Makes sense Exactly. Yeah, okay, so this all sounds great. What kind of mistakes did you make along the way? What have you seen or what did you hear from some of the other companies about things that they got wrong?
Thor Mitchell: 26:16
Yeah. So I think a few things. I'll sort of cheat a little bit and answer kind of two questions really. So what did we get right and what did we get wrong? So the first thing is one of the best pieces of advice we got was do not try and do this yourself. Hire a program manager to run the program. And to my mind that's a real litmus test, like as a company, are you committed enough to this program to actually hire someone to run it? And so we did that.
Thor Mitchell: 26:41
We went out and we found this amazing program manager, a guy called Anthony, who was previously running early careers at Adidas, had come up through a similar program himself, so understood the value of it, and by having someone who was focused on this full time and whose sort of personal performance within the business was tied to the success of the program, we really managed to drive it. We had someone who was really thinking about building relationships with the institutions, was managing all the processes around recruiting, was doing the initial screening, was doing all the interview scheduling, was managing the project selection process. It's a lot of work, and so having someone who's responsible for that. Later on, once the program was more established, we shifted Anthony into like a split role. He's 50-50 in another role and that still worked fine. So I don't think you necessarily need someone 100% full-time, but you do need someone to really put a considerable amount of time and effort into this. And so that person actually reported directly to me as the exec sponsor and we worked on it together. So that was the first thing.
Thor Mitchell: 27:39
The second thing is don't just rush into it. We tried to do that the first time. We got the timing wrong. You need to time your application process with the academic cycle, which means that you recruit around September, october time, for a start in June, july the following year, and you need to put the groundwork in place. So you need to build relationships with the institutions and drive awareness of the program in advance of the application window. So we had a time box application window of four weeks and we need to let people know in advance when that was going to open and when it was going to close.
Thor Mitchell: 28:07
And so we tried a variety of things. We tried attending careers fairs. We tried on-site talks at various different target institutions. The thing that worked best for us actually was targeted emails through the career service. So a lot of university career services now offer. You know, for a fee you can pay to have an email blast out to people who are interested in certain types of roles or disciplines and you can target specific courses.
Thor Mitchell: 28:29
So that was another thing that was important to us, because another piece of advice I got which was a little bit controversial was focus on CS grads for the first cycle or two, and I know there's obviously a lot of. You know, there has historically been a lot of debate, which I hope we've moved past now, about whether you need a CS degree to be a product manager, and I think we've all agreed you don't and I don't have one for what it's worth. But the reason they said that was not because they believe that you did need that, it was because in the first year or two you need to minimize the risk of sort of organ rejection of the APMs and maximize the chances of success, because you need to build support within the business to keep doing this. And especially when the program is not established and APMs are an unknown quantity, there's a risk that engineering teams might not have an appetite to take on an APM because they think why are we being sort of stitched up with someone who has no experience. So actually reducing those barriers to entry for the engineering team by giving them someone who's come out of a very credible CS program and they know speaks their language really just helps you kind of grease the wheels.
Thor Mitchell: 29:28
The first cycle or two so that was another thing we did. We sort of targeted CS graduates and then work on building awareness of the program. First cycle or two so that was another thing we did. We sort of targeted CS graduates and then work on building awareness of the program. Like focus on that, that's really important. And then you expect to get a bit overwhelmed. We were stunned by the appetite Last year when we had four positions on offer.
Thor Mitchell: 29:46
We had 855 applications, wow. But within the 855 applications about half of those were people who simply didn't qualify. So we were pretty strict. We said no, you have to be a final year computer science graduate, either undergraduate or postgraduate, from a leading university. But there is really a lot of pent-up demand for people looking to move into product management mid-career. We weren't catering to that but there is an opportunity there for for other programs in the future. So kind of prepare your recruitment team through them quickly as they come in and whittle them down to the sort of 50 or so that we took to phone screen, which the program manager did, and then the 20 or so we took to the interview stage and then I would interview about 10 and then we would make offers to you know four or five. So that's sort of how how it went.
Thor Mitchell: 30:32
So I think another thing was weird operational challenge was that these programs do not really are not really compatible with the way in which at least miro handled budgeting and and headcount planning. So our fiscal year ran first of feb to first of feb, so headcount and budget planning would happen towards the end of the year, so december, january. But we were looking to interview in September for people who wouldn't start until July, right, and so the headcount hadn't even been allocated at that point and the budget was not in place. And so we had to sort of get an exception. We had to go right to the CFO and the CEO and say you need to pre-approve the headcount for this, and that was actually. They were very supportive.
Thor Mitchell: 31:11
The problem then was all of the other processes underneath that just broke. So the recruiters would say, well, what's your role ID? What's your approved headcount ID? We're like, well, we don't have one, and so we had to sort of take shortcuts and cut through the process. Also, they worked on a model where they open a role and they keep it open until it's filled. We like nope, we have four roles, we have one, one month application process, that's it. So we were kind of just totally breaking the process all the way through, and it's only really recently, when the program was so successful, that it's been extended to engineering and design.
Thor Mitchell: 31:43
And so now that was going to be my next question yeah, when they're now looking to bring in sort of 10 graduates a year across the three disciplines that they started to put in place like an actual dedicated, like structured process for this, that isn't just me sort of you know, calling in favors and bending people's arms yeah, dude, is there any real functional difference in doing this for a product as, besides, doing it for design or dev, so I'm not an expert in that.
Thor Mitchell: 32:10
um, I'm not aware of similarly like heavily structured programs for engineering and design.
Thor Mitchell: 32:14
I think and I apologize if this is an oversimplification to those in those audiences but I think engineering has the advantage that there are software engineering degrees, right, and so you're talking about people who have the core skills in place already and can integrate into the organization reasonably smoothly off the back of those skills, whereas with apms we were hiring people who had never done this before, at least not knowingly.
Thor Mitchell: 32:40
Well, although I say that, I say that I'm going to contradict myself slightly, because one of the things that I was most surprised by pleasantly surprised by when we did the mirror program was how many candidates had internship experience in product management, which was just not a thing five years ago when I was trying to recruit in my last company. And yet we were talking to people who had done a one-year internship at somewhere like Vodafone or had done multiple internships at US-based companies over the summers, and sometimes with really big names, and often those people did unsurprisingly, did very well. So certainly the engineering and the design programs that they were just spinning up as I was leaving, they didn't have this structure, they were just a conventional graduate recruitment scheme that went for a relatively standard process.
Randy Silver: 33:22
You say that someone who's gone through a degree program or a coding bootcamp comes out with the skills. I worked at a startup that specifically targeted those people. For economic reasons, we would bring them in and put them on a specific program, not quite as structured or intense as this, but it was designed of essentially a tryout and with support, and not everyone made it through, so it's not enough to just have a certificate to do, whether it's product dev, design or anything. But I think we all know that. One Aside from what you just touched on a moment ago about internships, is there any advice you'd give to people who are interested in entering an APM program?
Thor Mitchell: 34:10
Yes. So the first thing I would say is, without wanting to start with a downer, is that an APM program yes? So the first thing I would say is, without wanting to start with a downer, is that an APM program should not be your career plan. There are not many of them and they are highly competitive, so you cannot afford to rely on APM programs as your route into the technology space. That having been said, obviously I strongly, strongly encourage people to apply for them. I think there are a growing number of good programs out there.
Thor Mitchell: 34:36
One of the reasons we want to do this in particular at miro was because there were very few good programs in europe specifically, and so we hosted the program in amsterdam and we brought apms to amsterdam. We relocated them for the program. So the first thing is like absolutely, you know, go for, but make sure you have a plan B. And then, as I said earlier, you know we're really looking for signals that you have those kind of potential to develop into a true technology leaders. And so think about how you can demonstrate that through your extracurricular activities, through the work you're doing, perhaps on your thesis or other kind of academic pieces you're doing that have some thought leadership aspect to them and then find opportunities to practice the skills of a PM. So maybe go to a startup weekend or some other kind of like bootcamp type thing where you get to say, hey, I'd like to play the PM on this team and kind of practice those skills and then also look out for meetups, right?
Thor Mitchell: 35:30
So there are meetups all over the world. Obviously there's the product tank network and many more. Go along to some of these meetups. That's where you'll meet PMs in person. You'll get a better flavor and sense of the role in the day-to-day. You might even meet someone who might be interested in you as a potential APM in the future. Fantastic.
Randy Silver: 35:47
And finally, I think we've got time for one last question tour For anyone who's interested in starting one of these. You've already given lots of advice, but I think one of the key things you said was getting the right executive support. You had to go right to the CEO and CFO to get support for some of these things. What's the thing that people should keep in mind when going to those execs? So first presenting the idea of doing this, what's the thing that's going to help convince the company that this is worth the time and effort?
Thor Mitchell: 36:15
So my approach was to really, as I say, do the research first, understand what it is you're looking to offer and how you're proposing to structure it, understand how much it's going to cost and how long it's going to take, but also look at some of the success stories. Right, as I say, there's a lot of companies, well-known technology brands have generated a lot of value out of having these APM programs. Talk to people inside the business as well about the program, because one thing that was very heartening for me was that whenever I mentioned that I was looking into this at Miro, everybody was super supportive. Everybody was like, yes, we need this, yes, it'd be great. Let me know how I can help. Like, build a base of support in the organization.
Thor Mitchell: 36:57
And then, as I say, don't just think of it as cheap labor. Yes, apms are relatively affordable, but that's only if you're only counting the dollars right. When you think of it in terms of the time investment of the people who are going to have to coach them, it's a bit more nuanced than that. So, don't just focus on the cost. Focus on the value that they'll generate, the impact on the culture, the impact on the technology brand as a whole and your reputation in the market and then the sort of long-term growth opportunity it will offer the larger organization.
Randy Silver: 37:25
Well, thank you very much, Thor. It's been too long. I'm glad we got a chance to do this again.
Lily Smith: 37:42
Absolutely. Yeah, great to see you. Thanks so much for having me back on the Product Experience. Hosts are me, lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day.
Randy Silver: 37:49
And me Randy Silver also host by night, and I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work.
Lily Smith: 37:58
Luran Pratt is our producer and Luke Smith is our editor.
Randy Silver: 38:02
And our theme music is from product community legend Arnie Kittler's band Pow. Thanks to them for letting us use their track.
